Senior SDET Engineer

Tekion Corp; Chennai District; On-site; INR 800,000 - 1,200,000; Full time

Job summary

Tekion Corp is seeking a Senior QA Engineer/SDET to enhance the quality of our AI-native backend services in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. This role involves owning the test automation strategy, collaborating with engineers, and validating complex system interactions.

The ideal candidate possesses over 4 years of QA engineering experience and strong expertise in Java-based test automation. You will drive quality excellence across backend systems utilizing Kafka event pipelines, while mentoring junior engineers and influencing quality practices.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in QA Engineering or SDET roles.
• Strong test automation proficiency with Java frameworks.
• Deep understanding of distributed microservices testing.

Responsibilities

• Own test automation strategy and quality practices.
• Collaborate with backend engineers for early quality embedding.
• Define and track quality metrics in CI/CD pipelines.

Skills

Test automation expertise using Java frameworks

Hands-on experience in QA Engineering

Experience with Kafka testing

Strong problem-solving skills

Collaboration skills

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Testcontainers

Jenkins

GitHub Actions

Job description

Tekion is building the first cloud-native platform for the automotive retail industry. Our platform brings together dealer operations, digital retail, OEM integrations, and data intelligence to transform how dealers and OEMs operate at scale.

Role Overview

We are looking for a Senior QA Engineer / SDET to drive quality across our AI-native backend services and platform systems. You will own test automation strategy, release quality gates, and quality engineering practices — working closely with backend engineers (Java + Python), product managers, and platform architects. This role focuses heavily on validating hexagonal architecture adapters, Kafka event pipelines, multi-database correctness, and AI scoring model outputs.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build, and scale automated test frameworks for Java microservices built on hexagonal architecture — with distinct test strategies for the domain core, adapter layers (MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Cosmos DB, Kafka, Elasticsearch, Redis/Aerospike), and external integrations.
• Develop and maintain comprehensive test suites: functional, integration (Testcontainers), regression, contract, and end‑to‑end across all adapter implementations. Handling, and dead‑letter queue processing. Correctness, and Elasticsearch index accuracy across service boundaries.
• Design and execute golden dataset test scenarios — seeding realistic dealer and customer data to validate scoring accuracy, suppression correctness, and attribution logic.
• Validate Python‑based AI/ML service outputs: scoring model results, recommendation correctness, and LLM response safety gates.
• Collaborate closely with backend engineers and architects to embed quality early in hexagonal domain design and adapter implementation.
• Drive testability improvements by influencing API design, logging, observability, and error handling.
• Own release quality and go/no‑go decisions by defining and tracking quality gates in CI/CD pipelines.
• Define and monitor quality metrics: test coverage, defect leakage, flakiness, MTTR, and automation ROI.
• Lead root cause analysis for production issues and drive preventive measures.
• Mentor junior QA/SDET engineers and set best practices across teams.

Skills & Qualifications

• 4+ years of hands‑on experience in QA Engineering, Test Automation, or SDET roles.
• Strong test automation expertise using modern Java‑based frameworks; working knowledge of Python test frameworks (pytest) is a strong plus.
• Deep experience testing distributed microservices, REST APIs, and Kafka‑based architectures.
• Experience with Testcontainers for integration testing across MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Kafka, and Elasticsearch locally.
• Strong understanding of Kafka testing: consumer behavior, event ordering guarantees, and idempotency validation.
• Experience with MongoDB and PostgreSQL testing patterns: data integrity, schema migration validation, multi‑tenant isolation verification.
• Familiarity with Elasticsearch test strategies: index correctness, relevance, and query result validation.
• Experience with CI/CD pipeline integration (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or equivalent).
• Familiarity with containerized environments (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Excellent problem‑solving, communication, and collaboration skills.

Good to Have

• Experience validating AI/ML model outputs and scoring pipeline correctness.
• Exposure to contract testing (Pact or similar) and service virtualization for hexagonal adapter.
• Experience with performance, load, and chaos testing (JMeter, Gatling, k6) against Elasticsearch and